Category: Courts

City Council, Courts, Crime, Drugs, legislature

Despite Concerns, Seattle Council Could Criminalize Drug Possession and Use in Seattle Next Week

By Erica C. Barnett

Next Tuesday, the Seattle City Council could adopt legislation to incorporate parts of a new state law criminalizing public drug use and simple possession, adopted during a short special session earlier this year, into the city’s municipal code. The proposal, sponsored by City Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen and backed by City Attorney Ann Davison, would empower the city attorney’s office to prosecute people for possessing or using illegal drugs for the first time in the city’s history.

The legislature adopted the new law, which makes public drug use and simple possession a gross misdemeanor, during a special session earlier this year. The law is a response to a state supreme court decision known as State v. Blake, which overturned a state law making simple drug possession a felony. The legislature passed a temporary law making possession a felony while it hashed out a more comprehensive proposal, which passed during a special session this year. The new law makes drug possession and public use a misdemeanor, effectively bumping drug cases down from King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion’s office to Davison.

If the council doesn’t pass the new law, Manion would still have the authority to charge drug misdemeanors in addition to felonies, but is unlikely to do so; in a letter to council members, Manion said that even if her office “magically had the staff and resources necessary to take on a new body of work, we would focus those resources on felony prosecutions because the PAO has misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor jurisdiction in only unincorporated areas of King County.  … The City Attorney’s Office is better equipped to handle these cases immediately[.]”

During the year-long period when drug possession was a felony, Manion’s office only prosecuted two possession cases, according to an analysis by city council central staff. That same analysis says that although Davison’s office “has not explicitly stated how they would act upon the authority to charge knowing possession or use of illegal or controlled substances,” a Seattle Municipal Court analysis estimates an additional 700 to 870 cases a year, “based on historical filings before the COVID-19 pandemic” and the state’s own estimate of 12,000 new drug cases annually across the state.

In a letter to the council, the union representing King County Department of Public Defense employees, SEIU 925, called the legislation “an unconscionable abuse by the City Prosecutor, which dismisses solid empirical evidence that the War on Drugs and increased incarceration cause widespread harm throughout our community.

How the new proposals will play out in practice, if they pass, is a matter of significant debate. Opponents say they will empower police to do “stop and frisk” searches and arrest drug users with impunity, clogging up courtrooms and crowding the understaffed county jail. Proponents say the changes will create consequences for people committing crimes and—as Nelson put it in a press statement—”remove any further cause for inaction on the most critical public health and public safety issue of our time.” A third group—let’s call them reluctant proponents—argue that the new laws won’t have much impact, because the city hasn’t prioritized drug cases in the past and shows no sign of changing course now.

In a letter to the council, the union representing King County Department of Public Defense employees, SEIU 925, called the legislation “an unconscionable abuse by the City Prosecutor, which dismisses solid empirical evidence that the War on Drugs and increased incarceration cause widespread harm throughout our community.” Criminalizing drug use at the local level, the letter continued, “would create the same dynamic within SPD which led to the New York Police Department’s ‘stop and frisk’ programs,” which “ultimately led to a class-action lawsuit from public defenders in New York on behalf of their clients.” The letter was signed by all four SEIU chapters in Seattle.

During an online “emergency teach-in” to discuss the proposal on Tuesday, Drug Policy Alliance director Kassandra Frederique said the pressure to re-criminalize drugs in Seattle was part of a nationwide trend toward more punitive approaches to drug use and addiction. “Not only are we criminalizing, or re-litigating, issues that we have decided were inappropriate [for criminalization], we are now creating new crimes in order as a way to deal with the issues at hand,” Frederique said.

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A majority of the City Council would probably agree that criminalizing drugs is not the best approach to the rising number of people using and selling drugs in public. However, the legislation may pass with a slim majority, if Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss—both up for reelection this year—join Nelson, Pedersen, and Council President Debora Juarez in voting for the law. Both were reportedly still considering their votes this weekend.

Why would council members vote for a law criminalizing drug use in Seattle? Politics. Three council incumbents are up for reelection this year, and two—Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss—are facing challenges from the right that could push them into voting for the law to avoid handing political fodder to their opponents. (Tammy Morales, in District 2, is also up for reelection but has already said she will vote against the bill). Although neither Strauss nor Lewis has said publicly how they plan to vote—in a recent candidate questionnaire, Strauss told the Seattle Times he was a “maybe” on the law—if they were to vote against the bill, opponents aligned with Davison and Nelson could blame them, and the council generally,  for tying the city attorney’s hands and allowing open drug use to continue. The campaign ads practically write themselves.

While it’s true that the city generally incorporates new state laws into its code, the proposed criminalization bill itself actually breaks from that convention, by picking and choosing which parts of the state law the city should adopt.

On Tuesday, expect to hear the argument that it would be highly unusual for the council not to incorporate new state laws into its municipal code, and the counter-argument that refusing to criminalize drug possession at the local level sends an important message that Seattle’s priorities are different than the state’s.

While it’s true that the city generally incorporates new state laws into its code, the proposed criminalization bill itself actually breaks from that convention, by picking and choosing which parts of the state law the city should adopt. According to the council staff analysis, the ordinance “only adopts some portions of the state bill” because some of the provisions include “work that SPD and CAO are not focused upon.” So the council does have, and is already exercising, discretion when it decides whether to make local laws conform with the state’s.

Even the bill’s proponents have acknowledged that the police and courts are unlikely to prioritize low-level drug cases over more serious misdemeanors, such as domestic violence and DUI; the Seattle Police Department is currently hundreds of officers shy of its hiring goals, and the city attorney’s office, county public defense department, and Seattle Municipal Court are also short-staffed.

The state law encourages prosecutors to refer defendants t diversion and treatment programs, but that would require additional funding beyond what the city has already provided for new adult pre-trial diversion programs. (The funding has been sitting at the Human Services Department, unspent, since the council allocated it in 2021.) The city attorney’s office has said it plans to use those diversion funds, once they’re available, for a different purpose: Taking on cases that would have gone to community court, a therapeutic court from which Davison unilaterally withdrew the city last week.

“Building out the needed infrastructure to be able to address root causes of these issues and get individuals into treatment and services may require time and resources,” the central staff memo notes.

Some—including PubliCola guest columnist Lisa Daugaard, who argues that the outcome of the drug law debate is largely beside the point—are unconvinced that the new law will result in mass arrests, prosecutions, and jail, because the city has already reduced its alliance on punitive strategies, even before the Blake decision forced the legislature to pass a new state law. Mayor Harrell, Daugaard wrote, oversees SPD, “and has gone out of his way to make clear that he has no intention of arresting, jail or referring drug users for prosecution.”

Opponents of the proposed new drug laws say that argument is short-sighted, because priorities can change, but laws are permanent. “It is extremely dangerous precedent for a bill to be passed that criminalizes [drug use] and where our elected officials try to placate advocates and community members by saying that they will that they will be able to manage it,” Frederique said during Tuesday’s teach-in. “Those people are temporary actors. Election happen all the time. And what people will look at is the law.”

Courts, Crime

Davison Unilaterally Ends Community Court Program
City Councilmember Sara Nelson and City Attorney Ann Davison

By Erica C. Barnett

City Attorney Ann Davison informed the Seattle Municipal Court today that the city of Seattle will no longer participate in the municipal court’s pioneering community court—a therapeutic court that allows people accused of certain low-level crimes to access services without pleading guilty to a crime. The decision effectively represents the end of community court in Seattle.

“After considerable thought and discussion,” Criminal Division Director Natalie Walton-Anderson wrote in a letter to municipal court judges Friday afternoon, “the City Attorney has decided to end the criminal division’s participation in Community Court. We recognize that Community Court has been part of the Seattle Municipal Court’s practice for many years, and that many will be disappointed by this decision.

“However, I want to assure you that the City Attorney remains committed to the principles behind the original formation of Community Court, and we remain committed to working with court and the Department of Public Defense to mitigate the potential impacts of this decision and to work together to find innovative and effective ways to address the criminal justice issues in our city.”

According to Judge Damon Shadid, who established and oversaw community court, Davison’s office “never negotiated in good faith regarding the changes they wanted in community court. They came with demands and if their demands weren’t met exactly, they continually threatened to pull out of the court.” Shadid spoke to PubliCola in his personal capacity, not in his role as a judge

In a statement, King County Department of Public Defense director Anita Khandelwal expressed dismay at Davison’s unilateral decision to pull out of community court.

“We are in the midst of a public health crisis. Our community members are dying from drug overdoses and need access to housing and to community-based services,” Khandelwal said. “Evidence demonstrates that the criminal legal system does not change behavior and that it undermines public safety by destabilizing people’s lives. Community Court was a collaborative effort to reduce the harm of the system and instead connect people charged with nonviolent misdemeanor offenses to services. Nonetheless, the Seattle City Attorney … seeks to push people deeper into a criminal legal carceral system that is expensive, deadly, and deeply racially disproportionate.”

One issue that came up during internal deliberations over the future of community court was whether defendants should have to do community service as a condition of receiving services through the court. During the pandemic, the court allowed people to take a life skills class in lieu of in-person community service, an option Shadid said proved to be more effective at helping people achieve their goals than requiring them to do manual labor near the courthouse. In her letter, Walton-Anderson said the work requirement was “a central component” of the original community court plan—one that would have had to be restored for the court to continue.

“The city attorney’s office would accept absolutely no compromise when it came to community service, regardless of the information that was provided to them about the efficacy of community service in the courts or just whether or not its right or wrong to force someone to work in order to receive services.”—Seattle Municipal Court Judge Damon Shadid

In recent months, Shadid said, the city attorney’s main demand was that the court require its participants to complete at least six hours of community service. However, he said, “the city attorney’s office would accept absolutely no compromise when it came to community service, regardless of the information that was provided to them about the efficacy of community service in the courts or just whether or not its right or wrong to force someone to work in order to receive services.”

Davison’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the decision to pull out of community court. In her letter, Walton-Anderson said the city attorney’s office will “shift cases where the defendant is likely to engage with service providers to a pre-filing diversion model.” The letter does not provide any details about this model or how the city attorney will determine which people are “likely to engage with service providers.”

Community court is a therapeutic, rather than punitive, court aimed at people who commit low-level crimes like theft, trespassing, and resisting arrest; people who commit serious misdemeanors, like DUI and domestic violence, are not eligible. Its goal is to address the root causes of people’s criminal activity, such as addiction and homelessness, by enrolling people in case management and services as an alternative to prosecution and jail.

Last year, Davison successfully pushed the court to categorically exclude people on her “high utilizers” list—those accused of more than 12 misdemeanor offenses in the past five years—from community court, arguing that people who commit crimes repeatedly “need meaningful accountability” in the form of prosecution and jail.

The court became an issue in last year’s municipal court elections. Davison-aligned candidates (including one of her own employees, assistant city attorney Nyjat Rose-Akins, running against incumbent, and community court champion, Damon Shadid) argued for drastically changing or eliminating community court on the grounds that it was all carrot, no stick. Rose-Akins, along with incumbent Adam Eisenberg, lost to their more progressive opponents, extinguishing conservative hopes that a new court would make community court more punitive or eliminate it altogether.

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In the letter to judges, which refers to community court as “Community Court 3.0” because it is the court’s third iteration, Walton-Anderson said the current court has not produced results, pointing to the fact that many people fail to appear in court for their first appearances—a point Rose-Akins made repeatedly in her campaign against Shadid last year. Shadid counters that the failure to appear rate for first appearances is “extraordinarily high” for misdemeanor cases throughout the municipal court system; “the only difference now is that in community court, we could try to connect people to services the day they came into court instead of warehousing them in the jail.”

Like many documents from Davison’s office, the letter uses several extreme, cherry-picked anecdotes about community court participants who went on to commit serious crimes to suggest community court is a soft-on-crime failure, including one involving a five-year-old child.

Earlier this month, Davison supported legislation sponsored by Councilmember Sara Nelson that will, if it passes, empower her office to prosecute people for possessing small amounts of drugs and using drugs in public, a first in the city’s history. (The Nelson bill stems from recent state action to make drug possession a gross misdemeanor. For Seattle to prosecute drug users under the new state law, the city has to pass a local law that incorporates—or goes beyond—the state law, which is what the proposed new law would do.)

According to some estimates, the new anti-drug law could result in up to 800 additional prosecutions per year—cases that, because they’ll be in mainstream court, will require full discovery, adding to existing court delays and further increasing the population of the downtown jail, which is currently sending inmates to jails in South King County in response to dangerous understaffing.

Courts, criminal justice, Drugs, legislature

Drug Possession Bill Moves Forward with Less Punitive Approach

By Andrew Engelson

The legislative battle over Washington’s new drug possession law took another turn last week when Democrats in the house Community Safety, Justice, and Reentry committee offered a new version of the bill, which would make drug possession a simple misdemeanor, offer more options for treatment and diversion instead of jail, legalize harm reduction paraphernalia like syringes statewide, and eliminate punitive jail time for those who fail to complete treatment.

Legislators have been in a vigorous debate this session over the state’s drug possession law after a 2021 ruling called Blake v. Washington. Although the case concerned a fairly narrow question about “knowing” possession, the court ended up tossing out the state’s possession law altogether, prompting legislators to pass a temporary law that expires in July.

Last month, in a surprise move, moderate Democrats significantly modified a proposed replacement for the expiring law with a series of amendments that increased drug possession to a gross misdemeanor and in most cases required judges to impose minimum jail sentences for those convicted who failed to complete treatment.

Rep. Roger Goodman (D-45, Kirkland), who chairs the committee, told PubliCola his striker amendment removes some of the more punitive aspects of the original senate bill, which would have made drug possession a gross misdemeanor—a charge that carries a penalty of up to 364 days in jail and a maximum $5,000 fine.

“Even when your possession was a felony, you could have three or four prior offenses and it still wouldn’t allow up to 364 days in jail,” Goodman said. “[The Senate version] actually increases the confinement time from what it used to be as a felony. So that’s not acceptable.”

“The House Democrats are horrified–including myself—by the prospect of returning to the war on drugs,” he said. “Ninety days in jail, which is what a simple misdemeanor brings, is certainly more than enough.”

“[Prison] was traumatic not only for me, but for my children,” who were 8 and 18 at the time, State Rep. Tarra Simmons said. “When you’re in jail, it’s not a trauma-informed therapeutic environment. Nobody’s getting better in jail.”

On Tuesday, the house Appropriations committee passed an additional striker amendment stipulating that if someone is convicted of possession and either completes treatment or has a clean criminal record for one year, the conviction will be removed from their record. Rep Lauren Davis (D-32, Shoreline) introduced the striker, and wrote the amendment to vacate convictions with help from  Rep. Tarra Simmons (D-23, Bremerton), who is the first person to serve in the legislature who has also served time in prison.

“When you have that stigma of the criminal record on your record forever, it limits where you can go in the future,” Simmons said. 

Simmons also said she’s working with Goodman, Davis, Rep. Nicole Macri (D-43, Seattle), and others on a floor amendment that would require prosecutors to divert a person’s first drug possession conviction to services and/or treatment. That  needs to  happen sometime before next Wednesday, the cutoff date for bills to pass in their opposite chamber.

The current version of the bill eliminates a provision added in the Senate that would require the Washington State Patrol forensic lab to deliver tests of drugs held in evidence within 45 days, and creates new misdemeanor offenses for “knowing” possession and public drug use. The provision on public use could be a carrot for centrist Democrats such as Sen. Jesse Salomon (D-32, Shoreline) who talked at length in testimony for his more punitive drug possession bill about seeing public drug use near his child’s school.

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Simmons, who was first elected in 2020, has been actively involved in the drug possession bill in part because of her own experience with substance use and the criminal justice system. After experiencing childhood trauma and teen pregnancy, Simmons struggled with substance abuse disorder, using opioids and methamphetamine. She was convicted of drug possession, possession with intent to deliver, and theft in 2011 and served 20 months in prison. 

“It was traumatic not only for me, but for my children,” who were 8 and 18 at the time. “When you’re in jail, it’s not a trauma-informed therapeutic environment. Nobody’s getting better in jail.”

A nurse by training, Simmons went to law school and successfully challenged a Washington State Bar rule that wouldn’t let her practice law because of her felony conviction. Of the current version of the bill, Simmons said, “I strongly believe that substance use disorder is a health issue”—one that coercion and punishment fail to address. 

“In the house, we may have a number of Democrats who can’t stand to vote for a bill that has any criminal penalties. And you may have Republicans who are not happy with the mandatory jail sanctions being removed and they may not vote for the bill.”—State Rep. Roger Goodman

The bill is likely to pass the house. The next step will be negotiations between the house and senate about which version will ultimately move forward. Goodman is confident the less coercive version will prevail, and Simmons says if it doesn’t, she won’t vote for it. 

“The Senate version had absolutely no mandatory options for diversion or post-conviction vacation or any of that,” she said. “The Senate version is the worst that we would get anywhere in the state. And so I could not vote for that.”

It isn’t just progressive Democrats who may balk at a compromise bill, Goodman said.

“In the house, we may have a number of Democrats who can’t stand to vote for a bill that has any criminal penalties,” he said. “And you may have Republicans who are not happy with the mandatory jail sanctions being removed and they may not vote for the bill.”

If the legislature fails to pass a law this session (unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility), the existing temporary law will expire on July 1, leaving Washington in the same place it was immediately after the Blake ruling–with no law on the books regarding drug possession. Simmons expressed concern that in that absence, counties and cities could pass their own possession laws with stricter penalties than any of the proposals legislators are currently debating. “If we don’t do something, then the local jurisdictions will create their own ordinances and we’ll have a patchwork across the state,” she said.  

In the meantime, Goodman says he’s committed to moving away from the war-on-drugs mentality of previous decades. “We need to learn what we did three years ago [passing the temporary possession bill], by starting to build up behavioral health infrastructure and more evidence-based interventions,” he said.

Courts, Police

City Asks Judge to End Consent Decree; Outstanding Issues Include Protest Response and Accountability

By Erica C. Barnett

The city of Seattle and officials from the US Department of Justice asked US District Judge James Robart to release the Seattle Police Department from federal oversight under a 2012 agreement known as the consent decree yesterday, asking Robart to find SPD in “substantial compliance” with the consent decree with the exception of two areas—crowd control and accountability—that the city says will finish addressing this year.

“After more than a decade of cooperation, the United States and the City of Seattle… agree that the Seattle Police Department (SPD) has implemented far­-reaching reforms and achieved remarkable progress through the hard work and dedication of SPD officers and civilian staff at all levels of the organization and from extensive contributions by community members and leaders throughout Seattle,” the draft agreement says. Specifically, the motion cites improvements SPD has made to its policies on use of force, investigative (“Terry”) stops, bias-free policing, and supervision of officers.

The city has been under federal oversight since 2012, after a 2011 DOJ investigation found police had engaged in unconstitutional policing practices, including bias and excessive use of force, and that it lacked meaningful oversight and accountability mechanisms to address unconstitutional behavior by officers.

Since then, Judge Robart has repeatedly declined to rule that the city has complied with terms requiring the department to address the problems outlined in the consent decree, citing incidents of excessive force and the city’s failure to implement an effective accountability system.

In 2019, Robart ruled the city out of compliance with the consent decree after the council adopted, and then-mayor Jenny Durkan approved, a contract with the city’s main police union, the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), that conflicted with historic police accountability legislation the council adopted the previous year.

And then, in 2020, police responded to protests against police bias and brutality by using force against protesters and tear-gassing Capitol Hill, prompting more than 19,000 complaints against the department.

The risk of a victory lap is obvious: The next time SPD uses force inappropriately or fails to be transparent about potential officer misconduct (as it has, most recently, with the January death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, who was struck by patrol officer Kevin Dave), the department could find itself back in Judge Robart’s crosshairs.

Although the agreement notes that the end of the consent decree will not end the department’s commitment to “continuous improvement” and ongoing reform, separate memos and statements from city officials make yesterday’s proposed agreement sound like a conclusive vote of confidence in SPD’s commitment to bias-free policing, accountability, transparency, and reasonable use of force going forward.

For example, the city’s official memo supporting the agreement, signed by City Attorney Ann Davison, calls SPD “dramatically transformed”—a department whose use of force “now presents a night-and-day contrast to the practices found by DOJ in 2011.” SPD’s dramatic use of force against people protesting against police violence in 2020 represented “one, temporary lapse” in the department’s reduced use of force in general, the memo says, and overall, “SPD’s hard work over the past decade has improved outcomes for the people of Seattle.”

The risk of a victory lap is obvious: The next time SPD uses force inappropriately or fails to be transparent about potential officer misconduct (as it has, most recently, with the January death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, who was struck by patrol officer Kevin Dave), the department could find itself back in Judge Robart’s crosshairs. Robart has demonstrated repeatedly that he’s willing to withhold a finding of full compliance and send SPD back to square one in the past, most recently after the 2020 protests, so overconfidence is probably ill-advised.

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Many of the memos and statements supporting the new agreement, including a declaration by the city’s labor negotiator, Danielle Malcolm, explicitly mention the ongoing contract negotiations between the city and SPOG, highlighting the significant changes SPOG’s sister organization, the Seattle Police Management Association, accepted as part of their new contract in 2022. Those reforms included a higher burden of proof for arbitrators to overturn misconduct decisions; a change in policy that makes it harder for arbitrators to overturn the police chief’s disciplinary decisions, such as firing an officer for misconduct; and improved transparency into the arbitration process.

The implication is that any contract the city signs with SPOG will need to include similar reforms. However, the proof will lie in the contract itself; again, the city council, which included now-Mayor Bruce Harrell, adopted reforms in 2017, then immediately abandoned many of them in the SPOG contract it signed the following year.

The proposed short-term agreement acknowledges the police department still needs to make progress on “ensuring sustainable accountability and improving policy and practices for using force in crowd settings,” and commits SPD to adopting a revised crowd management policy and “alternative reporting and review process for force used in crowd settings”; in addition, the city will hire a consultant to make recommendations about the accountability system.

Many of the memos and statements supporting the new agreement, including a declaration by the city’s labor negotiator, Danielle Malcolm, explicitly mention the ongoing contract negotiations between the city and SPOG, highlighting the significant changes SPOG’s sister organization, the Seattle Police Management Association, accepted as part of their new contract in 2022.

According to a statement by SPD COO Brian Maxey, the changes to crowed management will include things like “meeting with event organizers ahead of a protest, maintaining a low-profile (less visible police presence) when feasible, and using social media to communicate information to protestors in real time.” Maxey also cites new officer trainings, including Before the Badge and a system called Outward Mindset, which was developed in Utah by the LDS-affiliated Arbinger Institute.

In a statement, Seattle City Councilmember and public safety committee chair Lisa Herbold said, “When I share the data that demonstrates SPD’s reduced rates of force use, I often hear concerns about growing racial disparities. I appreciate SPD’s commitment in the Agreement to identify, study, and work towards ‘eliminating policies and practices that have an unwarranted disparate impact on certain protected classes’ and ongoing work to ‘develop a plan that details the technologies, policies, and practices that it will seek to employ to reduce disparities in policing.'”

Critics of the consent decree have argued that it has, paradoxically, prevented the city from adopting reforms because substantial changes to the way the department functions, such as funding cuts or proposals to replace some police with civilians, would require approval by the federal monitor.

Once the consent decree is lifted in its entirety, which could happen later this year, the city’s Office of the Inspector General (established during the consent decree) will take over the bulk of the responsibility of ensuring SPD is complying with its commitments to reform—the so-called pillars of the consent decree.

This work could include providing more transparency into the work of the Force Review Board, which reviews serious uses of force, and expanding the scope of its investigations; doing a deeper dive into potential bias during stops and detentions; and making policy recommendations. The agreement notes that Harrell’s budget included funding for three new staffers at OIG—positions that will become permanent after the consent decree is lifted.

Courts, criminal justice, King County

Amid Lawsuit Over Jail Conditions, County Moves Forward With Controversial Inmate Transfer Plan

By Erica C. Barnett

A King County Council committee tentatively moved forward on an agreement to move up to 150 men currently incarcerated at the downtown King County Correctional Facility to the South Correctional Entity (SCORE), a jail owned jointly by six south King County cities. The contract, which will cost the county around $3.5 million over two years, is supposed to “help King County mitigate the impact of the unprecedented levels of employee vacancies on staff in the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention,” according to a letter from King County Executive Dow Constantine that accompanied the legislation. Under the agreement, DAJD would initially transfer about 50 men to SCORE starting in April.

PubliCola first reported on the county’s decision to fund the SCORE contract last year.

The county council’s Law, Justice, Health and Human Services Committee moved the agreement forward without recommendation, citing the need to balance concerns raised by attorneys who represent incarcerated people with the abbreviated timeline laid out by Constantine and the county’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, which runs the jail. The council plans to work out the details over the next two to three weeks and adopt the agreement by the end of March.

The union that represents employees at King County’s Department of Public Defense, SEIU 925, believes the proposed agreement fails to address their concerns that moving defendants to SCORE will impede attorneys’ access to their clients and put them at a disadvantage during court proceedings; the union sent a letter to the council laying out their concerns with the contract last night.

Currently, SCORE only allows inmates to access court hearings virtually, and has just one booth where attorneys can talk to their clients and pass documents back and forth, along with several booths where one member of an inmate’s defense team (which might include investigators, paralegals, and mitigation specialists) can communicate with them at a time.

“We frequently have to get documents signed; we frequently have to work through documentation; we frequently need interpreters. Trying to do this over video will be impossible.”—Department of Public Defense union president Molly Gilbert

SCORE also has video visitation booths where visitors can speak with incarcerated people virtually; the jail, unlike those operated by King County, has no in-person visitation.

“Once you get above the misdemeanor level and start talking about felonies, you’re talking about really convoluted court hearings and legal concepts that are difficult to explain,” DPD union president Molly Gilbert told PubliCola. “We frequently have to get documents signed; we frequently have to work through documentation; we frequently need interpreters. Trying to do this over video will be impossible.”

Last November, the union filed a demand to bargain over the proposal to move inmates to SCORE, arguing that the agreement creates changes to their members’ working conditions; the county has not agreed to negotiate with the union.

“I don’t want to be an alarmist here, but we are at a critical stage. Delaying simply creates one more day, one more moment where the opportunities for people in our custody won’t get met.”—Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention director Allen Nance

At Tuesday’s meeting, interim DAJD administrative division director Diana Joy said SCORE had assured the department that it would transfer defendants to court and that attorneys as well as other DPD staff, such as investigators and paralegals, will have direct access to clients.

However, the contract itself says only that “SCORE will provide a minimum of one transport to a King County designated facility every twelve hours for King County inmates newly booked at SCORE or housed at SCORE and requested by King County to be returned.” It says almost nothing about defendants’ access to attorneys and others working on their cases; the sole reference to these rights in the contract is a line stipulating that “confidential telephones or visitation rooms shall be available to a Contract Agency Inmate to communicate with his or her legal counsel.

At Tuesday’s meeting, DAJD director Allen Nance said it was important for the county to move forward on the contract quickly because conditions at the jail have continued to deteriorate amid an ongoing staffing shortage.

“I don’t want to be an alarmist here,” Nance said, “but we are at a critical stage … Delaying simply creates one more day, one more moment where the opportunities for people in our custody won’t get met.”

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Understaffing at the jail reached unprecedented levels during the pandemic, as the jail struggled to hire and retain applicants for high-stress jobs that pay less than other law enforcement positions and lately have required frequent mandatory overtime. Currently, according to King County Corrections Guild president Dennis Folk, the jail is 111 guards short of its staffing target—an improvement since last year, when the shortage reached 129 absent guards.

“This is [DAJD’s] way of trying to decrease our numbers [of people] that are in custody, which ultimately results in us having less posts that we need to fill,” Folk said. Removing 50 people from the jail, for example, could eliminate the need to staff one floor of the jail, for example. “I don’t think it will make that big of a dent, but they seem to think it will.”

Guard shortages, combined with a dramatic increase in the number of people housed at the downtown jail, have led to untenable and sometimes dangerous conditions in the jail. In February, the ACLU of Washington filed a lawsuit against the county, alleging that conditions at the jail violate an agreement known as the Hammer settlement, which requires the jail to meet minimal health and safety standards, including adequate access to behavioral and physical health care.

The contract says the inmates who will be transferred to SCORE will be men accused of Class C and “non-violent B level” felonies, such as burglary, auto theft, and  stalking. “SCORE would not be used for people doing service work in King County jails, who have frequent court appearances, or who have significant medical or mental health needs,” the agreement says. Gilbert says a stable group of inmates without “frequent court appearances” doesn’t really exist; everyone in the jail, except people waiting to go to Western State Hospital for competency evaluations, has to appear in court. “We don’t understand what population it is they’re talking about,” she said.

“Yes, it’s challenging, yes, there are tradeoffs, but I think we owe it to the folks who are trying to make the best of a very dangerous situation, to take up their request … and give the best answer we can within the timeline they have asked for.”—King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci

King County Councilmember and committee chair Girmay Zahilay said Tuesday that while “on the one hand, we want to be able to relieve pressure on… the downtown jail,” which is facing “crisis” conditions, “on the other hand, we’ve heard some some downsides,” including the need for defense attorneys to travel to a third jail, on top of the downtown jail and the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent (which has suspended new bookings) , in order to meet with clients.

Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who worked for DAJD for 15 years and directed the department from 2011 to early 2014, countered that both DPD and the jail itself have asked the county to do something to improve conditions inside the facility. “So yes, it’s challenging, yes, there are tradeoffs, but I think we owe it to the folks who are trying to make the best of a very dangerous situation, to take up their request … and give an answer the best answer we can within the timeline they have asked for.”

Folk, from the jail guards’ union, said that once the jail has 473 guards on staff—the point at which guards who volunteer for extra shifts are no longer eligible for overtime pay at 2.5 times their regular wages—”I want that contract canceled.” Hiring more than 100 new guards presents challenges that go beyond recruitment. One issue, Folk said, is that many new recruits can’t pass the state law enforcement academy’s physical fitness test; in a recent batch of 13 new guards, he said, “over half failed” and had to be let go. Still, he said, the jail has 19 new hires coming on board this month.

In July 2020, King County Executive Dow Constantine pledged to close the downtown jail “in phases” after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the intervening years, the county’s overall jail population has rebounded, reaching about 1,600 (compared to a pre-pandemic average of around 1,900) last year.

Courts, homelessness, housing

Former Tiny House Village Resident Sues Nonprofit, Alleging Unlawful Eviction
Plum Street Tiny House Village in Olympia. Image via LIHI

By Erica C. Barnett

A former resident of the Low-Income Housing Institute’s Plum Street Tiny House Village in Olympia has sued the nonprofit shelter and housing provider in Thurston County Superior Court, claiming they unlawfully evicted him from his unit—an argument that, if it prevails, could reclassify tiny houses as a form of housing and give residents of tiny houses, and possibly other types of shelter, protection from eviction under state landlord-tenant laws. The lawsuit also names the city of Olympia as a defendant.

The former resident, Ryan Taal, was kicked out of his unit at the Olympia tiny house shelter after a verbal altercation with a staffer in March that, in LIHI’s telling, amounted to a threat. Taal, who had lived in his tiny house since October 2020, acknowledges that he told the staffer “you don’t know who you’re messing with right now” during an argument over the condition of his unit, but said he was referring to his struggles with bipolar disorder and anxiety attacks, not threatening her.

“I needed case management and help getting my prescriptions,” Taal said. “[The staffer] called the cops and lied to them and told them I was threatening her.” Shelter staff left a note on his door saying he had to be out within 48 hours or they would call the police, but Taal said he was gone by the following morning.

For the next two months, Taal lived in his car with his dog, using a nearby public restroom at night. At times, he couldn’t make it to the restroom, or found it occupied by people smoking fentanyl and meth. Taal says the food at the Plum Street Village was never great—the outdoor kitchen reminded him of “a refugee camp”—but his diet got worse when he was living in his car, and he developed gout.

“I’ve worked on a lot of tenancies that don’t look like a typical tenancy. However you look at these relationships, there needs to be a court process [for eviction].”—Carrie Graf, Northwest Justice Project

Taal’s Northwest Justice Project attorney, Carrie Graf, says that even though Taal didn’t have a formal lease, kicking him out with 48 hours’ notice and a threat to call the police is “kind of the definition of a wrongful eviction” under the state’s Residential Landlord Tenant Act (RLTA).

“I’ve worked on a lot of tenancies that don’t look like a typical tenancy. However you look at these relationships, there needs to be a court process [for eviction],” Graf said.

The RLTA defines a tenant as anyone “entitled to occupy a dwelling unit primarily for living or dwelling purposes under a rental agreement.” Taal’s lawsuit argues that the three-page intake form he signed as a condition of living at the village constitutes a rental agreement that entitled him to his unit, and that tiny houses are a form of transitional housing under state law.

Legislators only incorporated a formal definition of transitional housing into the RLTA in 2021, so this case—if it goes forward—could be a test of that definition.

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LIHI executive director Sharon Lee says that although the agency operates its own permanent and transitional housing programs, tiny houses are a form of emergency shelter, not housing—an argument she says is backed up by a court order in another recent case against LIHI, in which a King County Superior Court commissioner refused to grant a restraining order on behalf of a former resident of a Seattle tiny house village, finding that tiny house villages are “transitional encampments,” not housing. (That determination raises a whole other set of questions that, as much as I’m tempted to dive into them, are outside the scope of this article.)

“We take people who are being swept from parks and public places… and we don’t do a criminal background check, we don’t do a credit check, we don’t ask for references,” Lee said. “The moment you say ‘all shelters are going to be covered through the Landlord-Tenant Act’—which means you would have to go through this very extensive process of eviction—then I think you’re going to change the very nature of what a shelter is.” (Of course, if tiny house villages aren’t really shelter but “transitional encampments,” they would be subject to a number of restrictions that could force many of them to shut down—but, again, that’s outside the scope of this piece!).

LIHI staff pointed PubliCola to a 2008 case in which a resident at a YouthCare transitional housing program called ISIS House claimed YouthCare wrongfully evicted him for allegedly failing to follow rules and refusing to sign a behavioral contract.

In that case, US District Court Judge Robert Lasnik found that ISIS House was exempt from tenant protections because Youthcare counted as an “institution” where “residence is merely incidental” to another purpose, such as providing “social services and life skills support.” Lasnik also wrote that the existence of strict rules, such as a prohibition on any sexual conduct, made YouthCare’s rental agreements different than a traditional lease.

“If there are significant cases—violence, assaults, dangerous behavior, weapons— you would have to go through this very long, expensive eviction process. I think the sponsors of shelters would then say, ‘Well, we’re not going to take in all these people.'” —LIHI Director Sharon Lee

Similarly, Lee says, LIHI’s tiny house villages require residents to sign a code of conduct, participate in communal chores, and allow staffers inside their units at any time—all things a traditional landlord doesn’t do. Although some of LIHI’s tiny house villages are low-barrier, meaning people can use drugs or alcohol inside their units, Plum Street Village is not; the contract tenants sign bar them from using drugs or alcohol within a mile of the village property.

If tiny house villages were defined as housing, Lee said, it could lead to fewer low-barrier shelters that serve people with addiction and behavioral health needs, because shelter providers won’t want to take on the risk.

“If there are significant cases—violence, assaults, dangerous behavior, weapons— you would have to go through this very long, expensive eviction process,” Lee said. “I think the sponsors of shelters would then say, ‘Well, we’re not going to take in all these people. We’re not going to open our doors and have everybody claim they have a right [to tenant protections] under the Landlord Tenant Act.”

Graf believes tiny house village residents do have a right to those protections, including those who—like Taal—are accused of violating their contracts. The Landlord-Tenant Act, she said, “is just establishing a pretty bare-minimum set of rights for the person living there, like: you get three days’ notice before you have to leave, and if you want to contest that you’re entitled to a court process. If someone is committing criminal acts within the tiny house village, they can always be arrested.”

Since his ejection from Plum Street Village, Taal moved into an apartment across town—his first real apartment after years of being homeless in Oregon and Washington state. He’s also gotten help with medical care and prescriptions from his case manager with Familiar Faces, a program run by the city of Olympia that provides support for people who have frequent encounters with police. “I’m still worried about what if I become homeless again, but the majority of the days are good days,” he said.

His personal turn of fortune hasn’t shaken Taal’s commitment to his case. “I’m not the only victim,” Taal said. “What they did was super wrong, and I feel like they should rewrite their policies on how they properly exit people—get them the right case managers, the right therapy, not ignore them … or kick them out. Give them some hope.”

Courts, criminal justice, King County, Police

King County Plans to Move Up to 150 Inmates to Address Capacity Issues at Downtown Jail

By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this year, King County Executive Dow Constantine quietly added $3.5 million to the county’s budget for “potential contracted services to address jail capacity issues”—a reference to understaffing at the King County Correctional Facility in downtown Seattle, which is currently facing a shortage of about 120 officers. Despite offering bonuses of up to $15,000, the county Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD) has found it challenging to hire and retain jail guards, thanks in large part to long shifts and poor working conditions; the more guards leave, the worse the problem becomes.

Last month, DAJD director Allen Nance provided more details about what that $3.5 million would pay for. In a memo to all DAJD staff, Nance explained that the department is “pursuing a contract with the South Correctional Entity (SCORE),” a misdemeanor jail in Des Moines, to house some of the 1,250 or so people currently incarcerated at the downtown Seattle jail. SCORE is a public development authority, a type of government-funded nonprofit, that was established to provide jail services to seven South King County cities. The department plans to start in January by moving about 50 people to the jail about 15 miles south of Seattle, a number that could grow to 150 later on. SCORE, which provides jail services for six south King County cities, has a capacity of 802.

“The partnership with SCORE is being piloted to see if it might ease the workload on our staff and prevent a need to expand booking at the [Maleng Regional Justice Center (RJC) in Kent], given the Department’s limited resources and our current reliance on overtime to cover shifts,” Nance continued. About 260 people are currently incarcerated at the RJC, which is only accepting bookings by appointment. “At the same time, we will continue to explore other strategies to run our two jails more efficiently.”

Noah Haglund, a spokesman for DAJD, said that “if we finalize an agreement with SCORE, we would prioritize people with extended time between court dates or those who are serving jail sentences.” King County’s jails would “continue to house people with greater medical needs and those deemed to pose a higher security risk,” he said.

Most of those housed in the downtown jail face felony charges; about 9 percent have been charged with misdemeanors. Although SCORE is currently a misdemeanor jail, its director, Devon Schrum, said the facility is “constructed and staffed to hold any classification of arrestee, including those accused of felony-level offenses.”

Defense attorneys and the jail guards’ union—odd bedfellows that have increasingly found themselves on the same side of issues related to crowding and understaffing at the jail—oppose the move. “We’re already facing a staffing crisis,” said Dennis Folk, head of the King County Corrections Guild. “Let’s say we’re housing 50 or 100 inmates down there, and now they need to go to the hospital—who’s going to be responsible for taking them? How are they supposed to get to the court if that work falls back on us?”

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Haglund said the department has not worked out an agreement with SCORE to transport residents from Des Moines to Seattle; according to a rate sheet provided by Schrum, the jail charges $75 an hour for transportation by an officer.

The union that represents King County Department of Public Defense employees, SEIU 925, has similar concerns. Molly Gilbert, the the president of the SEIU 925 chapter that represents DPD staffers, said SCORE’s location and hours of operation could make it hard for attorneys to meet with clients and for clients to get to the downtown Seattle courthouse for in-person hearings. Bonnie Linville, an attorney with Columbia Legal Services,

In a recent survey of public defenders, many attorneys said moving downtown jail inmates to SCORE would make it more challenging for them to manage their caseloads, because they would have to drive between three jails instead of two; others, however, said SCORE has more reliable video visitation than either King County jail. The union has filed a demand to bargain over the change—the first time the union has ever moved to challenge a management decision through bargaining outside the regular contract negotiation process, Gilbert said.

Schrum says SCORE —unlike the King County system—is fully staffed and has had little trouble recruiting “highly trained” guards and staff. But some who oppose relocating inmates point to previous evidence of poor conditions at the jail, including a highly publicized 2018 case in which a woman experiencing a mental health crisis died in her cell later spending four days consuming huge amounts of water.

In 2016, Disability Rights Washington’s AVID (Amplifying Voices of Inmates with Disabilities) Jail Project released a report outlining significant problems with SCORE’s treatment of inmates with mental illness, including excessive use of solitary confinement and lack of access to psychiatric care. The report also outlined steps SCORE had taken to address some of the issues AVID raised; a spokesman for DRW said he could not speak to current conditions in the jail.

Many advocates say relocating 50 (or even 150) people from the downtown jail to SCORE will do little to address deteriorating conditions in the jail. For months, people in the jail have limited access to medical care, showers, laundry, and recreation outside their cells.

“There are requirements that people be provided adequate medical and mental health care, be taken to outside medical appointments and be allowed a certain amount of out of cell time per day and it is clear that the jail is not meeting those requirements. Pursuant to the Hammer settlement agreement, the jail is required to meet certain benchmarks regarding each of these issues.”—La Rond Baker, legal director, ACLU of Washington

“We’re hearing routinely from folks that they’re sending [requests for physical or mental health care] that aren’t getting answered, or the answer is, ‘sorry, we’re understaffed,'” said Bonnie Linville, an attorney for Columbia Legal Services, which provides legal aid to low-income clients. “We’re also hearing about fewer transfers and delays in transferring people to Harborview [Medical Center] for necessary care, which is really concerning.” Suicide has become such a problem in the jail that the department has removed bedsheets from all cells. The county’s 2023-2024 budget includes $1 million for “jump protection panels” at the jail.

With conditions inside the jail at a breaking point, advocates say the county may be in violation of an agreement it signed almost 25 years ago called the Hammer settlement. In 1988, the ACLU of Washington represented a man named Calvin Hammer who said he was denied medical care after an assault at the jail left him with a badly fractured skull. Eventually, the ACLU and King County reached a settlement that required the county to increase staffing and improve conditions at the downtown jail. Now, the ACLU believes the county may be in violation of the Hammer settlement, and could challenge the county’s compliance with the agreement.

La Rond Baker, the legal director for the ACLU-WA, declined to get into the details of any potential legal challenge. However, she said, “many of the conditions at the jail show that the jail is out of compliance with the Hammer settlement.” For example, “there are requirements that people be provided adequate medical and mental health care, be taken to outside medical appointments and be allowed a certain amount of out of cell time per day and it is clear that the jail is not meeting those requirements. … Pursuant to the Hammer settlement agreement, the jail is required to meet certain benchmarks regarding each of these issues.”

Continue reading “King County Plans to Move Up to 150 Inmates to Address Capacity Issues at Downtown Jail” →

Courts

Municipal Court Excludes Judge-Elect Vaddadi from Important Leadership Vote

By Erica C. Barnett

Incoming Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi, who defeated incumbent Adam Eisenberg in November, was not allowed to participate in the court’s election of a new presiding judge, which took place earlier this month while Eisenberg was still on the bench.

However, Vaddadi will be allowed to attend an upcoming judicial retreat that will take place just days before she takes office.

The presiding judge sets the court’s agendas, hands out courtroom assignments, and serves as the public face of the court.

According to local court rule 10.2, the municipal court judges are supposed to elect a new presiding judge “within 30 days after [a] vacancy occurs.” Because Eisenberg will not vacate his position until next January, Vaddadi told PubliCola, “this action… was not appropriate, nor was it in line with [the local rule] for a minority of the judges to hold a secret vote to elect a presiding and assistant presiding judge.”

Six judges voted to elect Judge Faye Chess as presiding judge and Andrea Chin as the assistant presiding judge. The vote reportedly took place after it was clear that a four-judge majority—Eisenberg, Chess, Chin, and Catherine McDowall—could unilaterally push the appointments through. Votes for internal court positions are not public, and a simple majority of the judges can vote in a new presiding and assistant presiding judge without other judges present.

“I believe this action speaks to the culture of this bench. It was not appropriate, nor was it in line with [court rules] for a minority of the judges to hold a secret vote to elect a presiding and assistant presiding judge.”—Seattle Municipal Court Judge-Elect Pooja Vaddadi

Judge Damon Shadid, who was out of town during the vote, said, “Seattle voters elected Judge-Elect Vaddadi by a wide margin”—62 to 38 percent— “on a platform of reform. I was therefore disappointed that my colleagues decided to elect a new presiding and assistant presiding judge without allowing either me or Judge-Elect Vaddadi to have input. The election took place without notice while I was out of town. Judge-Elect Vaddadi was also not consulted.”

“I believe this action speaks to the culture of this bench,” Vaddadi said.

The presiding judge sets the agenda for the court and serves as its public face; they also oversee all employees in the court and can fire court employees at will. In recent years, the presiding judge has played a prominent role in shaping local policy.

When Willie Gregory was the presiding judge, for example, he focused the court on race and social justice; during his tenure, the court made it easier for people to resolve outstanding warrants and eliminated most probation-related fees. In June 2020, amid nationwide protests against police violence, Gregory wrote a heartfelt open letter about the court system’s culpability in racial injustice.

In contrast, Gregory’s predecessor, Ed McKenna, openly urged prosecutors to seek longer sentences for low-level misdemeanors and frequently prescribed long jail sentences, rather than treatment, for mentally ill defendants; since retiring early amid a scandal in which he invited media and a activist to witness his sentencing of a homeless man who had gotten significant press coverage, he became a citizen activist whose endorsement signifies a candidate will take a law-and-order approach to crime and justice.

The court’s annual retreat will take place the weekend that begins January 5; Vaddadi will be sworn in the following week. It’s unclear if Eisenberg, who did not return a call seeking comment, will attend.

City Hall, Courts, Equity, Morning Fizz, race

Former City Employee Sues for “Reverse Racism,” Rufo Tells Tall Tales to Bellevue Audience

1. A former Seattle Human Services Department employee is suing the city for alleged discrimination based on his race (white) and his gender (male).

The lawsuit, filed by a California-based libertarian group called the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of ex-city employee Joshua Diemert, claims that HSD failed to promote Diemert and provide him with the significant raises he was “promised” while promoting less-qualified women of color. The suit also alleges that Diemert’s immediate supervisor, a woman of color, engaged in “unrelenting coercion and racial harassment,” forcing him to quit his job instead of accommodating an unspecified medical condition that Diemert claims was exacerbated by people constantly talking about white privilege around him.

Many of the examples of “racial harassment” listed in the lawsuit appear to involve Diemert inserting himself into other people’s conversations to make comments his colleagues perceived as racist, such as an incident where he claims he was chastised for “joining” his coworkers’ lunchroom conversations about white privilege, which occurred while he was “trying to cook his food.” In another example, Diemert claims a supervisor “berated” him for “attempting to correct [a coworker’s] discriminatory behavior toward a white applicant.” In a third, he accuses the city of forcing employees to participate in “critical race theory” during a training at El Centro De La Raza, where his comments led a coworker to call him an “asshole” in an email to another person.

In addition to $300,000 in damages, the lawsuit asks the court to find that the city’s anti-racist policies violate the 14th Amendment (equal protection) and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (protection from discrimination on the basis of race or sex). The suit also claims that the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative “aims to end American culture because it was created by ‘white, wealthy, Christian, cis-gender, straight, non-disabled men coming from Europe who wanted to protect their place within hierarchy and empire.'” That quote comes from a city document called “Building a Relational Culture,” which says nothing about “ending American culture,” but does provide a broad framework for undoing structural racism at the city—the actual project of RSJI.

Diemert’s lawsuit, which has gotten some coverage on FOX and various right-wing websites, is one of many recent lawsuits attempting to reframe racism as something that primarily happens to white people. The Pacific Legal Foundation is responsible for many of these anti-affirmative action claims, including a lawsuit challenging Women and Minority-Owned Business (WMBE) contracting goals in California; a case accusing the University of Minnesota of discriminating against men when it cut the men’s gymnastics program; and a case alleging that elite public schools in Boston discriminate against white and Asian kids.

The city’s Human Services Department did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday, and a spokesman for the City Attorney’s Office said the city has not been served with the lawsuit yet and could not comment.

2. “Critical race theory,” unsurprisingly, was also among the topics professional troll Chris Rufo brought up at a talk last month to support the Washington Policy Center. (PubliCola reviewed a recording of the event). If you aren’t familiar with WPC, it’s the libertarian think tank that was responsible for all those confusing pro-capitalism billboards you saw around town a couple years ago. (“Free markets destroy climate change,” one read, with a Tesla logo as the “T” in “climate.”) The event, which was emceed by conservative podcaster and Project 42 “brand ambassador” Brandi Kruse, also featured former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

Rufo, a onetime Seattle City Council candidate who spun off a job at the right-wing Discovery Institute into a career as the nation’s leading purveyor of disinformation about CRT, has since turned his attention to vilifying trans women, drag queens, and LGBTQ+ people in general. Rufo’s work is part of nationwide efforts to drive LGBTQ+ people out of public life through both legal methods—such as Florida’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law—and violence, including increasingly violent protests against LGBTQ+ events, including drag shows).

Kids are not being taught “fisting” in schools—but, as Rufo noted, it’s the kind of “salacious” story that gets attention from people like Tucker Carlson.

Speaking to a group of “young professionals,” Rufo bragged about his efforts to spur people to act by speaking to their emotions, even when that means ignoring “data” and facts. “I had been doing this campaign on critical race theory, doing the reports, working with the Trump White House,” Rufo said. “And all of a sudden I see something really incredible happen. I started seeing all these videos of parents at school board meetings going nuts. And that’s what you want to see.”

As an example, Rufo continued, he was pushing out stories about “the teachers union—they’re the villains, right?”—he paused for boos—”which was promoting a guide book, a kind of recipe book that was in cartoon format designed for kids, that had a guide to BDSM, sadomasochism, [and] fisting.” In reality, the “cartoon guide” is a document aimed at teenagers seeking information about queer sex, produced by a Toronto Planned Parenthood affiliate and the United Way of Greater Toronto that was linked, among many other documents, on the website of an internal NEA LGBTA+ caucus. Kids are not being taught “fisting” in schools—but, as Rufo noted, it’s the kind of “salacious” story that gets attention from people like Tucker Carlson.

Rufo also claimed a victory closer to home: The reversal of calls to “defund the police” by members of the Seattle City Council. In taking credit for this change, he claimed that Nordstrom’s flagship store in downtown Seattle, he said was “burned down” to “ashes.”  Nordstrom, which is located just a few miles from the Bellevue hotel where Rufo was speaking, remains fully intact and was bustling with holiday shoppers earlier this week.

Courts, Transit, Transportation

Unpaid Tickets from West Seattle Bridge Violations Add Up to Millions
West Seattle and Spokane Street Bridges
Unauthorized drivers who used the lower Spokane Street Bridge (right) when the West Seattle Bridge was closed for repairs racked up more than 130,000 traffic citations in 2021 and 2022. Photo by Lizz Giordano.

By Lizz Giordano

A windfall from traffic tickets during the closure of the West Seattle Bridge could soon reach the Seattle Department of Transportation, as more than 74,000 citations from traffic cameras on the Spokane Street bridge, also known as the “lower” West Seattle Bridge, head to collections next year. 

When the West Seattle Bridge closed for repairs in 2020, the city banned most drivers from using the lower bridge except between late night and early morning to give buses and emergency vehicles a clear path between West Seattle and downtown. The city first relied on police officers to catch scofflaws, then installed automated cameras to issue citations in early 2021. 

As of the end of this October, more than half of those citations remain unpaid. At $75 per citation, that adds up to more than $5.5 million in potential revenue, half of which goes to the city.

Most people used the First Avenue Bridge, located two and half miles south of the high bridge, as their detour route.

City Councilmember Lisa Herbold, who represents West Seattle, noted that most commuters didn’t break the rules during the bridge closure.

However, she added, “It’s sad that over 500 drivers … had such a large number of tickets, [disobeying] policies that were created for everyone’s safety. While an occasional violation is perhaps understandable, this quantity suggests disregard for the need to keep the bridge use at a level that allowed for unimpeded emergency vehicle access.”

The Spokane Street traffic cameras have an unusually low compliance rate. Overall, drivers paid about 61 percent of tickets issued by other automated traffic cameras, including red light cameras and cameras at school zones, in 2021, about twice the payment rate for Spokane Street Bridge violations.

In 2021, photo enforcement cameras along the Spokane Street Bridge issued 89,041 citations to unauthorized drivers on the low bridge. This accounted for nearly half—46 percent—of the 192,432 camera citations issued citywide that year. In 2022, before the West Seattle Bridge reopened in September, drivers using the lower bridge racked up another 41,535 citations, for a total of more than 130,000 tickets on the bridge.

According to Seattle Municipal Court data, drivers have paid just 32 percent of these tickets. The court suspended late fees and stopped sending outstanding tickets to collections at the beginning of the pandemic. But starting at the end of January, drivers who have failed to pay their fines will be subject to late fees.

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The court also plans to start sending unpaid fines to a collections agency, which tacks on a 15 percent fee on each ticket, as soon as the end of April.

“People with unpaid tickets from 2020-2022 should plan to respond to their tickets by January 30, 2023,” said Laura Bet, a spokeswoman for the court. “People can respond to their tickets by setting up a payment plan, setting up a community service plan if they are low-income, or scheduling a hearing.”

A handful of drivers could face some particularly hefty invoices. Two vehicles racked up more than 300 citations for crossing the Spokane Street Bridge without authorization in 2021 alone, according to the data. Another 35 drivers amassed more than 100 tickets each and more than 500 accumulated more than 20 citations that year. 

The city was able to deploy the cameras on the low bridge as part of a pilot program after the state legislature expanded the city’s authority to use automated cameras to enforce traffic laws. The new law also allows camera enforcement when drivers ”block the box” by stopping in intersections at red lights.

State law dictates that half of the revenue for the pilot goes to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission to fund bicycle, pedestrian and non-motorized safety projects. SDOT is using its half of the money to add accessible signals that vibrate and chirp to some pedestrian crossings.

The Spokane Street traffic cameras have an unusually low compliance rate. Overall, drivers paid about 61 percent of tickets issued by other automated traffic cameras, including red light cameras and cameras at school zones, in 2021, about twice the payment rate for Spokane Street Bridge violations.

Before the pandemic, drivers paid 74 percent of citations from photo enforcement cameras issued in 2018 and 2019, according to data from the court.

A spokesperson for SDOT declined to comment on the large number of tickets drivers racked up on the Spokane St. Bridge.